Monday, February 8, 2016

Digital boldness needs to take more disciplines, not less.Organizations large or small across the industrial sectors are on the journey of digital transformation. Digital transformation as the leapfrogging change, represents the next stage of business maturity and will improve how the enterprise works and interacts with its ecosystem, with the customer at the center of its focus. But what are further aspects and specific steps in making the bold digital transformation?

Vision clarification: Leadership is all about future and change. Leadership vision is to serve as an enabler for digital transformation. A visionary digital leader changes the course of business by seeing beyond what all other could see or by charting new revenue or growth through the creation of a new product or market; or share their perception of future trends of businesses such as digitalization, innovation, or globalization. To clear the path to changes, whether that be the elimination of obstacles or to provide coaching and guidance and making an influence so that the talent employees are limited only by their imagination. Leaders should actively make decisions that are in concert with the vision. There’s also a collective belief in the organization’s vision for the future, that this vision can and will be a success. Vision is not a mirage, and strategy planning is not "shelfware." It is important to “make vision reachable” and "make strategy happen"; vision and strategy have to be accessible, understandable, and made relevant to all levels of the organization so the intention of such leadership vision is to clearly define, through actions and deeds,

Change forward and upward: There are two types of change: proactive and reactive. Proactive implies anticipation of changes – external and/or internal – that will affect the company. Reactive is adaptive to change that has already occurred or is underway. A strategy for "change" should focus on betterment, forward-looking and upward improvement. Change for the sake of change doesn't help anyone. The most important factor for positive change is flexibility in planning, decide to be prepared for inevitable change, clear roles and responsibilities, and have an authority to adapt and act as reality changes plans. The common denominator to effecting outcomes is communication, which by definition is a two-way street. Invest in change before it happens. Change leadership and change management need to go hand-in-hand.

Speed Up: The majority of organizations today are running in between - the mix of old and new; the different departments or divisions within an organization have different speeds. In practice, even in the simplest organizations, the 'speed' is not homogeneous across the enterprise, there are differences between 'front office' and 'back office,' enterprises with multiples businesses and associated business models. So many organizations will have to 'mix & match' at least two different speeds' with appropriate GRC disciplines, accommodating the resulting different digital strategy management cycles. Hence, speed up implies to orchestrate digital transformation in a synchronous way. The goal is to accelerate changes, but not rush up for catching only short time gains, and strike the right balance of digital speed and stability, quick wins and long-term business results.

Digital fitness: Digital is fluid, digital fitness is based on strategy competency and execution effectiveness, keep information flow to avoid data overloading, process redundancy, or overall business complication (unnecessary complexity). Make wise investments in people, technology, and innovation. The emergent technology trends are where the opportunity located for real competitive advantage from investments in digital into the future. Whether an organization realizes the potential advantages of these technologies depends on many factors. Either information or technology is the means to the end, not the end. If you don't know how to use it properly you won't get good results. Keeping digital fit means you need to make consolidation, integration, modernization, automation, innovation, and optimization and manage digital transformation in a systematic way. You have to embrace the new technology and finding ways to create strategic value.

Innovation imperative: Innovation needs to become a digital lifestyle of a company. At the organizational level, transformational innovation won’t take place if their core tendencies in the business life cycle aren’t identified and overcome. Unlearning what a company has learned is part and parcel of fixing what is broken. At the industrial age, companies of all sizes, especially large corporations, are designed to function in the silo to improve efficiency, but often suck at innovation. Because they become too dependent on satisfying corporate regulation or protocols, and never get around to developing a culture that fosters/rewards innovation until it is too late. But digital is the age of innovation which can be stimulated via enforcing across-functional interaction, iterative communication, and practicing systematic management disciplines. Innovation comes with the increased knowledge and understanding of facts. You never know how innovative you might be in some field before encountering the problems and before the adoption of the solution. Innovation is all about leveraging the better way to do things or meet higher customer expectation.

Being BOLD in digital transformation doesn’t mean you go rogue without disciplines; it means to have a thought-out planning, but also take calculated risks and adapt to the emergent changes with speed. You follow principles, not overly restrictive rules to inspire innovation, you build up a dream workforces with inclusive leadership and complementary capabilities and skills to run a high-mature digital organization seamlessly.